Trisha Goddard

Trisha Goddard
Goddard at a Health Hotel session during the 2009 Liberal Democrat Party Conference.
Born	Patricia Goddard (1957-12-23) 23 December 1957 London, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Occupation	Broadcaster, actress
Years active	since 1987
Television	Trisha Goddard (1998–2004, 2005–10)
Spouse(s)	Robert Nestdale (divorced) Mark Greive (divorced) Peter Gianfrancesco (1998-present)
Children	Madison Billie
Website
www.facebook.com/TrishaGoddardTV

Patricia "Trisha" Goddard (born 23 December 1957) is a British television presenter and actress best known for her morning talk shows, Trisha Goddard, which was broadcast on a mid morning slot on ITV before later being moved to Channel 5. In Australia, she is known as a longtime presenter of Play School. Goddard has been based in the United States since 2010, and is currently hosting her own talk show, Trisha, which premiered in September 2012.

Background

Goddard was born in London, to a black mother from Dominica. Until recently, Goddard wrongly believed that her mother's English husband was her father.^[1] In 2008, Goddard had a DNA test to find out her biological paternity, the tests revealed Goddard's DNA as 90 per cent Sub-Saharan and around 10 per cent European.^[2] This confirmed that the person who she believed was her father and called 'Dad' had no biological connection with her.^[2] She was raised in Tanzania until 1967 and then returned to England.^[2]

Education

Goddard was educated at an independent school for expatriates in Tanzania, followed by primary school at Heacham in Norfolk and Sir William Perkins's School in Chertsey, Surrey, at the time a voluntary controlled Church of England girls' grammar school, and which is now an independent school.

Life and career

Goddard's early career as an air stewardess led to travel writing for magazines and then, after settling in Australia in the mid-1980s, a new career in television.

She then became a presenter and roving reporter for Australia's 7.30 Report which led to her presenting the prime-time show Everybody, after which she started a production company, with producers Mark Greive and Phil Gerlach. She helped devise, produce and present more than 400 programmes of the chat show Live It Up, before returning to the United Kingdom in 1998 to host her own talk show on ITV, Trisha.^{[citation needed]}

Trisha Goddard launched her own independent television production company, Town House TV, with former Director of Programmes and Production for ITV Anglia, Malcolm Allsop.

She recently published her autobiography, in which she revealed the aforementioned truth about her parentage, a fact that had previously been reported in The Daily Mail.

Media career

After emigrating to Australia, she worked as a television presenter (most notably on the ABC's The 7.30 Report) and also as a host of the children's program Play School. She was later chairperson of the Australian Government's National Community Advisory Group on Mental Health.

In 1998 after returning to the United Kingdom she became the host of an ITV flagship daytime chat show, the BAFTA winning Trisha, produced by Anglia Television.

In September, 2004 Goddard left ITV to join Five in a new programme titled Trisha Goddard, which made its TV debut on 24 January 2005. Similar in style to her old show, it focuses on relationships, families in crisis, and reunions. The show is produced by Town House Productions. In the early stages of the show, it was observed that repeats of her ITV show have continued to achieve higher ratings than her new programme on Five. In January 2009, Five announced it would not be renewing her contract, for financial reasons.^[3]

Goddard had always been willing to appear in comic satires of her television programmes. In 2003, a specially-shot clip of her show appeared in the ITV religious fantasy drama The Second Coming. In 2004, she filmed two short scenes for the romantic zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead. Both scenes were filmed on the set of Trisha. In 2004, a facsimile version of her show was featured on Season 3, Episode 1 of the show "Fat Friends" where she interviewed the "slimming group" of the main characters, and where Betty unintentionally revealed her secret...that she had given up a baby at the age of 15. The episode showed the director telling Trisha to stay on Betty and wait until she revealed her secret.

Her show was also featured on a Comic Relief episode of Little Britain where the character Vicky Pollard met up with her long-lost father. For a What Not to Wear Christmas special aired on 22 December 2004, Goddard was given a fashion makeover by Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine. ^[4] She appears very briefly in the 2006 Doctor Who episode "Army of Ghosts" in a parody episode of her own show entitled "I Married a Ghost".

She appeared as a guest on the BBC's The Kumars at No. 42 and was also the guest host for an episode of the second series of The Friday Night Project, for Channel 4. Goddard also has her own talk show on Liverpool radio station City Talk 105.9.

In March 2008, it was revealed that Goddard had breast cancer. Since then she has sought treatment through chemotherapy, and still insists on continuing to front and produce her Channel Five show. At the end of August, it had become apparent that Trisha was in remission, and seemed very healthy again. It was reported that she had lived through worse afflictions than cancer (namely, depression) and compared herself to Kylie Minogue for motivation.^[5]

On 10 January 2009, Five announced that The Trisha Goddard show will not be returning after its current run has finished. Goddard also made an appearance on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? raising up to £75,000. She also made an appearance on the BBC show Shooting Stars in 2010.

Beginning in 2010, Trisha has occasional appearances on the American talk programme Maury as a consultant and a guest host.

On October 20, 2011, NBCUniversal Television Distribution announced that it would launch an American version of the programme to start in September 2012.^[6] She does presently have that show, and it is produced in Stamford, CT. The American show is now being broadcast on Channel 5 in the mornings in Goddard's native United Kingdom.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Trisha Goddard.

• Trisha Goddard's Website
• Channel 5 (UKTV channel) website
• Trisha Goddard at the Internet Movie Database